Lithuanian MP faces impeachment for ties to Russian spy

VILNIUS: Lithuania’s parliament on Wednesday launched impeachment procedures against a lawmaker over his ties with a former Russian spy and a Kremlin-controlled energy company, as tensions with Moscow simmer.

Mindaugas Bastys, 52, resigned as deputy speaker of parliament after being denied top security clearance by the intelligence agency of the Baltic Nato and eurozone state.

The parliamentary national security and defence committee “must clarify whether Bastys’ ties posed a threat to national security and if these possible ties could have had an impact on political decisions,” said its chairman Vytautas Bakas.

The probe could take several months. Bastys also suspended his membership of the Social Democrat party, the junior partner in the centrist governing coalition.

Intelligence chief Darius Jauniskis pointed to Bastys’ alleged personal ties with the unidentified former KGB spy, representatives of Russia’s nuclear power corporation Rosatom and Russian state television in a letter sent to the speaker of parliament.

These relations “make Bastys vulnerable and pose a threat to the security of state secrets entrusted to him,” said the letter seen by AFP.

Bastys has admitted that his ties could be ethically questionable but insisted they did not compromise state secrets.

Rosatom is building a nuclear power plant in neighbouring Belarus close to the border with Lithuania. Vilnius has sharply criticised the project, citing safety and energy security concerns.

Baltic states Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia emerged from nearly five decades of Soviet occupation in the early 1990s and joined Nato and the EU in 2004.

The alliance is currently deploying four multinational battalions to the Baltic states and Poland on a rotational basis to counter frequent Russian military exercises near the region.

The move is designed to reassure Lithuania, a country of three million, and other Nato eastern members rattled by Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and military buildup in the region.